Lawmen begin dialing down investigation into South Alabama shooting rampage

AP/Steve CannonJimmy Hill, Samson police officer, center, hugs a friend at the First Baptist Church of Samson after a prayer service Wednesday. The service was held for the victims and families of those killed Tuesday in the Geneva County shootings.

The center was the nexus of an investigation into Tuesday's shooting rampage in South Alabama that left 11 people dead including the gunman Michael McLendon who shot himself. The center 's operations Wednesday peaked at 20 agencies and more than 60 law enforcement officers, according to Alabama State Trooper Kevin D. Cook.

There will be officers working the case after the shut down, Cook said.

"Our agents are still pursuing leads and finding out new information, talking to family members who are left and other people who knew Mr. McLendon," he said. "As to motive, what we do know is that his mother had a lawsuit pending against Pilgrim's Pride."

Cook said McLendon had been armed with two semi-auto rifles, a 12 gauge shotgun and .38-caliber pistol, the latter of which he used to kill himself.

Among the residents trying to return to normal life this morning was Janie Howell, district administrative coordinator for the Geneva County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Howell's life intersected with the gunman on the road between Samson where she lives, and Geneva, where the shooting spree ended.

Howell showed a reporter a 2-inch gash in the hood of her van where a bullet had struck, bounced into a windshield wiper housing and disappeared.

The gunman, being pursued from Samson, rear-ended a man in a small pickup truck. That man died from multiple rifle rounds shot into the cab of his vehicle after the gunman struck it.

Howell and others were saved from a similar fate when a state trooper, who was pursuing the gunman, drove up on the scene and parked between them and McLendon.

The trooper's car was hit as many as 20 times, but the lawman suffered only from glass fragments.

"It sounded like firecrackers, that's how fast the shots were being fired," Howell said.